April 18, 1990

OBITUARY

Ralph David Abernathy, Rights Pioneer, Is Dead at 64

By RICHARD SEVERO

The Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, a pioneer leader in the civil rights struggle who was one of the most trusted confidants of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, died yesterday at the Crawford W. Long Hospital of Emory University in Atlanta. He was 64 years old.

The Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, a pioneer leader in the civil rights struggle who was one of the most trusted confidants of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, died yesterday at the Crawford W. Long Hospital of Emory University in Atlanta. He was 64 years old.

The Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, a pioneer leader in the civil rights struggle who was one of the most trusted confidants of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, died yesterday at the Crawford W. Long Hospital of Emory University in Atlanta. He was 64 years old.

The hospital issued a statement explaining that Mr. Abernathy, who had been in poor health in recent years and had been hospitalized since March 23, was undergoing a lung scan yesterday morning when his blood pressure dropped and his heart stopped beating. He was given emergency treatment and placed on a cardiopulmonary support system. Doctors planned emergency surgery, but Mr. Abernathy died at 12:10 P.M.

Late yesterday the White House issued a statement from President Bush that said, ''Barbara and I join with all Americans to mourn the passing of the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, a great leader in the struggle for civil rights for all Americans and a tireless campaigner for justice.''

The King-Abernathy friendship started in the early 1950's and continued until Dr. King's assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis. Mr. Abernathy was with him that day and cradled his bloody head as Dr. King lay mortally wounded on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel.

Mr. Abernathy then took care of some details of the funeral and delivered the eulogy for his friend. The two had marched together, addressed friendly and hostile audiences together, faced violence together, and on many an occasion gone to jail together.

Successor to Dr. King

After Dr. King's death, Mr. Abernathy took over the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which he ran for nine years. Many of the conference's leaders had misgivings, but Dr. King had wanted it that way. He had always praised Mr. Abernathy's help, and Mr. Abernathy consistently said that he did not mind being in Dr. King's shadow and that the two were never rivals.

And yet there were accusations in 1989 that Mr. Abernathy had abused Dr. King's trust. The complaints came from prominent leaders in the civil rights movement after publication of Mr. Abernathy's autobiography, ''And The Walls Came Tumbling Down,'' in which he wrote that Dr. King had been an adulterer.

Mr. Abernathy said he had not revealed anything that had not already been discussed publicly. ''Had others not dealt with the matter in such detail, I might have avoided any commentary,'' he wrote. He also said that although he personally did not approve of Dr. King's behavior, he understood its reasons, because both he and Dr. King were away from home so much.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who succeeded Mr. Abnernathy as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said yesterday that he regretted the things Mr. Abernathy had said about Dr. King in the book but praised Mr. Abernathy ''as a stalwart steward'' in the civil rights struggle and called him ''a faithful servant of the cause of liberty and justice.''

Remembrance by Young

Andrew Young, former Mayor of Atlanta and now a candidate for governor of Georgia, was a civil rights worker in the 1960's who knew Mr. Abernathy well. Mr. Young said yesterday that Mr. Abernathy would be remembered as one who performed ''a silent labor that was very much needed,'' and as a ''jovial, profound, loving preacher who gave his life in the service of others.''

One of Dr. King's two sons, Martin Luther King 3d, called Mr. Abernathy's death ''a very tragic loss to our nation.''

The autobiography was not the first time Mr. Abernathy had been involved in disputes with colleagues in the civil rights movement. One of his most notable adversaries was Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King.

In 1978 he took issue with the script of a six-hour television ''docudrama'' on Dr. King's life. He called it ''a distortion of history'' because it did not give proper credit to various conference leaders. But Mrs. King strongly disagreed with him and said the drama was a faithful portrait of the man and the movement.

In 1980 Mr. Abernathy again became the focus of controversy when he endorsed Ronald Reagan's campaign for the Presidency. Several black leaders assailed his judgment and Mrs. King distanced herself from Mr. Abernathy, calling Mr. Reagan a ''war hawk'' who ''lacked distinction even as an actor.'' But Mr. Abernathy said he had received assurances from Mr. Reagan that blacks would be appointed to high posts in a Reagan Administration.

Endorsement of Reagan

The Reagan endorsement came at the end of a decade of some difficulty for Mr. Abernathy. He left the presidency of the S.C.L.C. in 1977, at a time when the group had fallen into debt and critics said it no longer sparked the imagination of blacks as it had when it was run by Dr. King.

But if Mr. Abernathy was criticized as too conservative, disorganized, wedded to the techniques of the past and lacking Dr. King's charisma and gift of oratory, he continued to win praise for his contributions to the early days of the civil rights struggle and to Dr. King's success in leading it. Some said Dr. King could not have triumphed as he did without Mr. Abernathy's help.

Mr. Abernathy and Dr. King served as pastors of different Baptist churches in Montgomery. They met in Atlanta in the early 1950's, in the Ebenezer Baptist Church, whose minister was Dr. King's father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. Bus Boycott in Montgomery Mr. Abernathy became pastor of the First Baptist Church of Montgomery in 1951. A few years later, Dr. King was named pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Atlanta. They became fast friends and found that they agreed on what was needed if blacks were to progress: a consistent, nonviolent effort that would have broad appeal not only to the blacks it was trying to help, but also to whites.

Together they organized a boycott of buses in Montgomery in 1955, after Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, was arrested because she refused to give up her seat to a white person. The organization that directed the boycott was the Montgomery Improvement Association. Through its auspices, blacks began to use car pools or walk to wherever they had to go, rather than patronize segregated public transportation. Dr. King was its president and Mr. Abernathy an important aide.

In the years that followed the boycott, which helped achieve the integratio they sought, Dr. King and Mr. Abernathy went to jail together 17 times as a result of demonstrations they led from Selma, Ala., to Albany, Ga.

Mr. Abernathy, along with Hosea Williams, Bernard Lee, Andrew Young, James Bevel, Jesse Jackson and others, were mainstays of the conference, which was established by Dr. King in 1957 to promote peaceful integration in the South.

Mr. Williams, who was mobilization director of the conference, said he thought of Dr. King and Mr. Abernathy as ''the greatest team,'' observing, ''Martin wouldn't make a decision without him.''

Fighters for civil rights in the South were no strangers to violence. In 1957, a year after a Federal court issued an injunction that gave blacks and whites equal status on buses, a decision upheld by the United States Supreme Court, Mr. Abernathy's home and church were bombed. He and his family were not harmed, but the church was destroyed.

In 1961 Dr. King asked Mr. Abernathy to resign his pastor's job to devote all his energy to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Mr. Abernathy served it as vice president at large, a job he kept until Dr. King's death. ''We're going to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that you can kill the dreamer but you cannot kill the dream,'' he said, but the conference was not able to maintain its influence and power as it had when Dr. King was alive.

Grandson of a Slave

The grandson of a slave, Ralph David Abernathy was born on March 11, 1926, in Linden, Ala., one of 12 children and the youngest of seven boys. His father, William L, Abernathy, who owned a 500-acre farm in Marengo County, supported the Linden Academy, a local high school for blacks, and was said to be the first black ever asked to serve on a grand jury in his county.

Mr. Abernathy earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics at Alabama State College in Montgomery, then received a master's in sociology from Atlanta University in 1951.

In 1977, after he left the conference, he made an unsuccessful run for the Atlanta seat in the House of Representatives that had been vacated by Mr. Young.

Mr. Abernathy returned to his post as pastor of the West Hunter Street Baptist Church in Atlanta and served for many years.